Watch: How to explore famous museums around the world with Google Arts & Culture

Museums, galleries and landmarks house massive amounts of content to look at, learn from and interact with.

However, taking a trip to visit some of these places, whether it's in your city or halfway around the world, can be expensive. Plus, you might run out of time before you get to see everything. For example, the large crowd of people admiring the Girl with a Pearl Earring painting may mean you don't get as good a look as you hoped for while visiting the Mauritshuis Museum in the Netherlands. Or maybe you have one child who wants to see the dinosaur exhibits at the Smithsonian while another one wants to see rocket ships. 

Well, if anything gets in the way of your culture vulture experience, you can forget the hassle and expense of a return visit and grab your laptop instead, because all you need to visit some of these museums and galleries is a computer with an internet connection. 

Watch this video to see how to tour a museum from your couch. 

Google Arts & Culture

You’re probably familiar with using Google Street View to look at a house or scope out the parking situation before checking out a new restaurant. Google Arts & Culture essentially uses that tool to invite you inside museums and galleries to explore more than 3,000 collections, including art in the Van Gogh Museum in Amsterdam and the Frida Kahlo Museum in Mexico. No passport required!

Google Arts & Culture also offers 3D Immersive Experiences, online exhibits, augmented reality games and so much more. 

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Virtual Tours

The Smithsonian allows virtual visitors to digitally roam around some of its museums, including the Museum of Natural History and the National Air and Space Museum. 

If historical landmarks or the great outdoors are more your style, let the National Park Service show you around. The NPS website offers virtual and narrated tours of sites like the Wesleyan Chapel at the Women’s Rights National Historical Park and places that aren’t open to the public, like the Nathan and Polly Johnson House.

You can also explore some of the country’s most beautiful national parks from your couch. Take a walk in Yellowstone National Park or climb a 300-foot Redwood Tree in virtual reality. Now, that's not something you get to do every day.